Obama should take a fair pay cue from LBJ

Published 7:29 pm, Saturday, August 17, 2013

In 1965, in a nation torn by racial strife, President Lyndon Johnson signed an executive order mandating nondiscrimination in employment by government contractors. Now, as President Barack Obama has observed, the nation is divided by a different threat: widening income inequality. He could respond much as Johnson did — with an executive order aimed, this time, at raising the pay of millions of poorly paid employees of government contractors.

Recent studies have shown how hundreds of billions of dollars in federal contracts, grants, loans, concessions and property leases currently flow to companies that pay low wages and provide little benefits, even as executive pay among contractors has risen. Tax dollars are being used to fuel the low-wage economy and worsen inequality.

This research has been underscored by a recent complaint filed with the Labor Department by Good Jobs Nation, a group representing workers employed under concession agreements.

Many laws and executive actions, mostly from the 1930s and 1960s, require fair pay for employees of federal contractors. Those protections have been eroded by special-interest exemptions, complex contracting processes and lax enforcement. A new executive order could ensure that the awarding of contracts is based on the quality of jobs created.

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Obama also could tell federal agencies to conduct comprehensive reviews of contracts to see if the work should be done in-house. There's evidence that private-sector contractors are often costlier than government workers.

Nearly 50 years after an executive order helped end discrimination in government contracting, another is needed to ensure fair pay in the same sector.